Gaza crisis set to move into uncharted geopolitical territory

These were the words of former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, speaking recently online to an American think tank in the wake of Hamas’s attack on Israel and the subsequent bludgeoning of Gaza.

Whatever your take on the rights and wrongs of the latest round of bloodletting in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, no-one would deny that Barak – who shares with two others the title of being the most highly decorated soldier in Israel’s history – knows what it’s like to be at the sharp end of war.

Barak knows too just how easily things can go rapidly wrong in such conflicts, playing out not as the politicians and generals envisaged, but instead turning into grave political and strategic errors, the ramifications of which can be profound and long-lasting.

READ MORE: Scottish Government pledges £500,000 to Gaza relief

In referring in his recent speech to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, America’s invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and of Iraq in 2003, Barak’s warning is clear. All three, he says, were provoked by acts of terrorism, but all three ended up embroiling major powers.

In doing so, not only did they do irreversible damage to those powers, but catastrophically set back the interests of the Afghans, Iraqis and Lebanese in whose countries those invasions took place.

Short of a diplomatic miracle, it’s hard not to feel that once again the die is cast and not since those past invasions has there been such ominous signs in advance about the debacle to come over Gaza.

You would like to think that US president Joe Biden is acutely aware of this, but there was little sign of it yesterday as he stumbled through his response during his visit to Israel. Among other things.

Biden’s flippant choice of language – in a conflict where language really matters – saying that he believed the devastating explosion at the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza on Tuesday that killed hundreds of Palestinians was “done by the other team,” was seriously off tone.

Not that apportioning responsibility for the blast at Al-Ahli really matters in some ways. By that I mean of course it matters to those Palestinians maimed or who lost loved ones – that goes without saying. But whatever the Israeli military says and with which Biden evidently concurs, the “Arab Street”, as it’s known, will have already made up its mind. So too, it would seem, have the governments of some Arab countries like Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia.

As I’ve said in this column before, both sides in this conflict, Israeli and Palestinian alike, have their own respective narratives of victimhood, and events, as ever, will take their course.

But speaking of Egypt and US-Western “diplomacy”, I still find it rich that Washington and Britain, among others, continue to bring pressure to bear on Cairo to open its borders with Gaza.

Humanitarian corridors, access for aid and allowing Palestinians with foreign passports to exit is one thing, but leaning on Egypt to accept a flood of Gazan refugees into Sinai is something else again. Frankly, I can empathise with the senior Egyptian official who this week reportedly told a European counterpart what he really thought of the idea.

“You want us to take one million people? Well, I am going to send them to Europe. You care about human rights so much – well, you take them,” the Egyptian is said to have replied.

He has a point, you know, for I can just imagine UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman, or pro-Trump Republicans in America, being asked to do the same thing. As it is, Braverman and the Tory government go into a state of near apoplexy at the thought of a dinghy with a few dozen Afghans or Syrians landing on our shores – never mind millions of Palestinians.

My point is that already this conflict is rapidly impacting beyond the borders of Israel and Gaza. In the West Bank – to which little attention until late has been paid – a boiling-over is already in progress.

Tuesday’s unrest in Ramallah, Hebron and Jenin, where Palestinians protested against Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas, starkly revealed where that might be heading.

The West Bank protesters’ refrain of “the people want the fall of the president,” harks back to the 2010-12 Arab Spring uprising rallying call, “the people want the fall of the regime,” and the Palestinian call now is as much a response to Abbas’s perceived inaction in the face of events in Gaza as it is of him being a lackey of Israel.

Watching events closely in the West Bank, of course, will be Hamas’s ally in neighbouring Lebanon, Hezbollah, as in turn will its patrons Iran. As Hanin Ghaddar, an expert on Shia politics throughout the Levant and senior fellow at The Washington Institute’s Programme on Arab Politics, recently highlighted, Hezbollah has gone from being in 2006 a Lebanese armed resistance group to Iran’s main regional army, leading and training most of Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) militias in the region, from Syria through Iraq to Yemen.

With the estimated 130,000 missiles that Hezbollah has at its disposal including a few dozen precision-guided weapons, its arsenal is massive compared to Hamas, as is its number of personnel.

Hezbollah’s “organic military, ideological and financial links to the IRGC,” would also make it very difficult for its leadership to say no to Tehran if the latter decides to launch a war against Israel from Lebanon, insists Ghaddar – a view shared by many other analysts.

Few doubt that Biden during his meeting with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday will have discussed the possibility of the US using military force if Hezbollah joins the war in Gaza and attacks Israel with its huge arsenal of rockets.

For its part, Hamas, meanwhile, according to a senior representative in Lebanon, is closely co-ordinating with Hezbollah its next steps. The Hamas statement comes just hours after Tehran warned of “pre-emptive action” against Israel.

And there you have it – the deadly cycle. First, the possibility of an exodus of Palestinian refugees entering Egypt. Second, unrest in the West Bank calling for the overthrow of the PA. Third, Hezbollah’s potential for unleashing its military might from Lebanon in support of Hamas at the behest of Tehran. Put them together and the Gaza crisis is careening into uncharted geopolitical territory.

As Barak warned; “Remember Afghanistan. Remember Iraq. Remember Lebanon.” Perhaps already events are under way that in the not-too-distant future will play out by embroiling much bigger players and we will in turn add “Remember Gaza” to that list of ignominious strategic blunders.